Lapping the short, tight and twisty Nelson circuit at Shannonville Motorsport Park in Ford's new 2007 Shelby 500 GT version of the Mustang is like being trapped in a 500-horsepower revolving door.
Just about once a minute you're back where you started from while everything in between has been a kaleidoscopic blur. Or, to put it another way, it's like driving a 1/24th scale slot car on an HO scale track.
The Shelby 500 GT not only continues a great name, that of legendary American automotive icon Carroll Shelby and the Mustangs he created in the 1960s, but it's also the most powerful production Mustang built with its 5.4-litre, twin-cam, supercharged, 500-hp V-8.
Ford brought a pair of these potent new-age muscle cars — they go on sale in coupe and convertible form this summer priced at about $50,000 — to Shannonville for a test session on a cold, damp morning recently.
Bringing up the revs in the pit lane with the positive-feeling throttle pedal immediately taps you into the fat portion of the torque curve and, as you step out of the clutch, huge rear tires start to scrabble on the damp asphalt and launch out onto the track and into turn one.
On a flying lap, you're in third through this sweeper, the front tires holding your line nicely and those outsized rears gripping reassuringly as the torque twists them into the pavement in response to a wide-open throttle as you exit.
In a moment or two, you're braking really hard and steering right into 90-degree turn two, which is followed in a blink by a brake tap and another second-gear right hander, then the short brutal squirt to turn four, an awkward left-hander also taken in second.
Accelerate down the brief kinked "straight," just catching third, and then you're hard on the brakes again for the hairpin right. You carry second through a twisty bit before launching onto the front straight again.
It's a ride and a rush no video game is ever going to come close to replicating, but for all its sheer time-compressed violence, a fast lap in this ferocious 500-hp car isn't actually all that difficult.
Put that down to the great job the design team has done in making all the tools at your disposal — engine, gearbox, brakes, steering and suspension — work in harmony and balance.
Like all of this current generation of Mustangs, the Shelby pays homage with its personality and style to the sixties era but with a (mostly) modern approach to engineering.
It's a product of Ford's special vehicles team (SVT) operation, the company's high-performance arm, with inspiration provided by Shelby (now in his 80s) who developed the original Shelby GT350 in 1965 and followed it up with the Shelby GT 500 in 1967.
Shelby is also known, of course, for the Cobra sports car whose name and chromed snake emblem were co-opted by Ford and which survives remarkably untarnished considering it has been attached to such things as the 1978 Mustang II King Cobra hatchback coupe.
The Shelby is part of a long-standing Mustang marketing strategy, says new SVT boss Hau Thai-Tang (who was previously head wrangler of the new-generation Mustang project), that involves pumping up enthusiasm for the name with the frequent introduction of interest-generating new versions.
As with the original Shelby specials, the current car is essentially a hot-rodded version of the production Mustang and shares its platform, basic suspension setup and main sheet-metal pieces. The SVT boys and girls just tweaked a thing or two here and there.
